Love thrives again at Lord Egerton Castle

Colonial settler Lord Maurice Egerton, from whom the Egerton University derives its name, would turn in his grave if he knew how the solid legacy he implanted in a castle he built at Njoro has been torn down.

Lord Egerton shunned and hated women all his life, after a woman, for whom he built a monumental castle at Njoro, turned his proposal for marriage down and rejected the building, terming it a ‘museum’.

Loner’s legacy

He banned women from ever setting foot in the 100-acre ground in which the castle stood, spent the rest of his life alone until his death on January 30, 1958. The woman associated with the baron’s irrational behaviour has never been named in all accounts about his life.

Lord Egerton Castle in Njoro

Stark irony today glares back at the loner’s legacy. The house that failed to win love for the fourth Baron Egerton of Tatton, Cheshire, has become a favourite attraction for lovers tying the knot.

Its expansive green lawns and the tree-cloistered fringes of the gardens where he ones walked alone, sulking in rejection, are most sought after for garden weddings and other outdoor events.

Where the reclusive baron pinned notices on trees warning that the grounds were out of bounds for any woman, lovers now hold hands and walk down open air aisles, declaring the vows of their union.

On weekends, the university rents out the Egerton Castle grounds to as many as four wedding parties.

Hundreds of women walk here freely, unbeknown to them that 52 years ago a notice hang from a tree warning that any woman trespassing the grounds risked being shot.

Men visiting the baron were asked to leave their women eight kilometres away.

He banned his male workers from ever bringing their wives to their servants’ quarters or keeping chicken and dogs.

He hated chicken and dogs because the woman who spurned his proposal said the six-bed roomed house the Lord lived in — before completion of the castle — was ‘small as a chicken coop or a dog’s kennel’.

What a far cry the castle is today from that lonely legacy. A couple will wed on Valentines Day and others have booked the venue for subsequent weekends until April.

Nostalgia

Its beautiful flower gardens, well-trimmed green lawns with the background of the imposing, solid castle provide a scenic setting for garden events.

Robert Onyiego, 76, a former employee of Lord Egerton, still takes care of the castle which is owned by Egerton University.

A potrait of Lord Maurice Egerton of Tatton

Onyiego lives with wistful nostalgia of the days he served his lonely master, which he compares with what his estate has become.

Onyiego recalls that his master led a “quiet, private and lonely life after he was rejected by the love of his life”.

“He had few visitors. He lived alone, ate alone, played the piano to himself and slept alone in this large castle. You could tell which side of the castle he was in by listening to his steps,” says Onyiego.

Lord Egerton had started building the 53-roomed castle in 1938, finishing it in 1954.

Since arriving in Kenya in 1927, Egerton had lived in a six bed-roomed house next to the castle.

As the construction work neared completion, in 1954, he invited his fiancÈ from England to live with him.

Onyiego remembers the woman drove into the compound but did not stay for two hours before driving away.

“We learnt later she had refused to live with him and went back to England where she got married to another man,” he said.

“My master kept swearing and vowed never to love again, let alone marry another woman. He also did everything possible not see set his eyes on women,” recalls Onyiego.

The castle was built by an engineer called Albert Baron from Rome to oversee the construction of the castle.

A bathroom in a guest room that was never used

About 100 Indian workers formed part of the technical labour team. Locals were employed to do manual labour.

Most of the rocks used for the construction were imported while others were fetched from Kedowa and Njiru. The marble and tiles used to decorate the interior were imported from Italy and England.

On completion, he employed 16 servants, all male and rarely entertained visitors though the castle had many guest rooms.

He lived in it for four years before passing away in 1958.

The castle is located in Ngata, 14 kilometres from Nakuru town. It is managed by Egerton University and tourists and locals are charged a fee to visit it.

No heir

The castle was open to the public in 2005 and, apart from attracting tourists and history lovers, it is also used for corporate functions such as office parties and cocktails and picnics.

Egerton University used to allow weddings to take place for free at the castle grounds until 2007 when they started charging a fee.

Born in 1874, and dying childless, Lord Egerton’s loner lifestyle ended his family lineage because he did not leave an heir to carry on the family name.

He was the last son of Alan de Tatton and Lady Anna Louisia Taylor. His two siblings William and Cecil Egerton had died while young.

Egerton also did not allow chicken and dogs in his compound because his fiance compared his house to a bird nest, though he ate chicken, meat and eggs.

Couples who wed at the Castle are aware of its history but say they do not let that stand in their way.

hi,,great story,sounds very interesting,i am looking for information on the lord egerton castle,i work at tatton park in cheshire,knutsford,england, lord egertons estate here in englang, i am not sure if you could help me or put me in contact with anyone that can help me,,i am trying to re trace the life of lord edgerton in kenya,i have lots of questions to ask and if there is anyone that might be able to help me i would be very greatfull,the only information i have is that the castle was empty and destroyed,but reading your story i am thinking it has been re built to its former glory,and is in use today..

Hi
IMy father ran the Knutsford Boys Club for Lord Egerton or “Lordy” as my brother and I called him, in the 1950s and my family often visited him at Tatton Hall. He was not the woman hater that he was made out to be and though probably a lonely man was not sad or angry and I have very fond memories of him
Sally Bristow

hello sally,thank you for your email,,great news for me this is,,i work at tatton park and i have been gathering as much information about the egerton family as i can,,i have just come of ebay buying guides and information about tatton ,,i came across information about the castle in kenya some time ago and most of it was very posative and sounds very good and interesting,,then i started to come across this information about maurice being a woman hater and things like this,,going off information,books and the tatton estate i found this very hard to believe,so your mail has changed things for me in a big way,,i talk to house guides most days at tatton trying to get as much information about maurice as i can ,,but i am finding that alot of the information is given in good faith,,but i think as none of us were there at the time we are not getting the true picture,and not one person has said anything like you have or been connected to the egerton family,,lordy sounds good to me ,it fits well to maurice ,i have down loaded the information on the knutsford boys club some time ago and have it in my folders,,i also have lots of information on the castle in kenya,i am involved in maintenance on the estate at tatton, but my interests are in estates and lanscaping,so i have been very lucky to be able to get involved in the mansion side of things,i use my files to give information to visitors i come across in the grounds of tatton,,they find it very interesting to look at , i found that using lots of pictures and giving the information to them helps to open things up ,its going very well and i am happy to tell as much about life gone by here as i can. it makes me laugh when visitors ask me what my job is at tatton ,i reply i am the litter picker today but do allsorts,,how do you know so much about the estate i am asked lots of times,well i find it very interesting i tell them ,and maurice had a very intersting life and at the end of it gave it all back,and fifty plus years on i also have a job here, and working in a place you enjoy and have an interest in is great,,i could go on and on but i will leave there for the moment,,there is one area i would find intersting ,,the relationship maurice had with his mother and what was going on ,its sounds like they were not that close to each other in the later stages of her life, ,i will show your mail around the mansion tomorrow i am sure we will be talking about this for some time,
thank you very much for your information ,please feel free to mail me anytime if you have any stories or information,,sorry sally i forgot to ask ,are you in the uk,or other..

am a postgraduate literature student and have read your article with gratitude. am interested in doing my project based on the legend’s story. any idea if someone has done the same in the same discipline?

I have been researching Lord Egerton for seventeen years & was Mansion & Old Hall Manager at Tatton Parkfor five years. Quite frankly, most of the material written & told about Maurice, 4th Baron Egerton is unsubstantiated BUNKUM. I know people who knew him during his lifetime & he was most certainly NOT a woman-hater. Why would he ban all women from his property in Kenya, whilst INVITING many women & their families to his Cheshire home? In 1954 when he was supposed to invite his ‘fiancee’ to his Ngata Castle he was 80 years of age! Come on. Guides all love a good story. Some guides look for good evidence.

great news ,the information from k.humphries is very lifting,,i work on the egerton estate at tatton park knutsford,england,i have been looking up information since i started there over 1 year ago,its hard going as i have found that lots of information is nonsense about maurice egerton,i myself spend time in the mansion and i feel its been well lived in and many happy times were had there on the estate,,i also read the info board in the maurice egerton exhibition room,i come across lots of letters from people who spent time there as kids,teenagers,,the letters recall all sorts of good things,i am not a guide on the estate but i walk around the outer estate looking and learning from things i see and i also have the estate survey that gos back to to the 16 hundreds,it shows the estate from the beginings up to the present day,its helped me very much to understand what was going on from the day the egertons took over the estate,everything is there to read from the days they had to rent the estate out as there was no money in the family to the last days of maurice egerton,,its in me for some reason to keep going with this as i find it very interesting and the mansion is a gem,getting to the point about the ngata castle in kenya,thanks to k humphries for the information,i have been told about you from other staff members at tatton and its been said tatton is in your blood,you were the bible of tatton park,great,,i am very sad that when we start to look at the kenya estate that this woman hater man seems to come forward,,i am myself very sure its rubbish and upsetting for many here in the uk,as its already been stated maurice was 80 yrs old when this girlfriend hating thing came about,,i see this as very offensive to the egerton family and there estates,,and to people like myself who work to keep this legacy of the egerton family going for future generations,maurice did many things here and in kenya and in canada (on his other estate)?? that is also another interesting story,remember he set up farms,schools and all sorts of social activites for all ,men women and children,because his lady friend decided kenya was not for her should not mean maurice turned into this woman hating man,like all of us when relationships go wrong there is always problems in all areas including where you live,if as it seems to me as i gather my evidence is the case i find it such a shame that all the good work and help maurice did and gave to many is being abused,,as k humphries says in the posted letter here,,look for good evidence and do your home work, and dont follow like sheep,,i sit in the estate office on the home farm at tatton where the kenya estate was administrated from ,i read the paperwork,books records and look at the artefacts and i get a good feeling about how things were running and and what was going on ,,it was good i feel that as i sit there, maybe if i sit there long enough maurice might appear in spirit and tell me the truth,? he might have done this already and just dont realise it,,

I have read your comments and agree that Lord Egerton could not of hated women. My grandmother, her daughter, two son’s and two daughter in laws were actually guests of Lord Egerton at Tatton Park in, I would guess the early 50’s. The reason for this invite was, my Uncle was evacuated to Tatton Park during WWII, he lived there for some time, he was educated privately at Lord Egerton’s expense, at Newborough Primary School, Coxwold Yorkshire, by Lord Egerton, he was taken on a holiday to Kenya, where my grandmother wrote to her son Robert and said ‘ don’t forget to clean your teeth and be a good boy for his Lordship’.
My grandmother was widowed young and she never remarried, she brought up her four children single handed. Whilst Robert was staying with Lord Egerton, he wrote to my grandmother and asked to adopt Robert, she naturally refused, how could a mother give up her child. After the war was over he kept in touch with my grandmother, frequently sending her ‘hams’. This certainly doesn’t sound like a man who hated women. I believe that he was a very kind man according to my elderly aunt of 91.

On a visit to Tatten many years ago, myself and family got talking to a member of staff who immediately knew of Robert staying at Tatton, she asked for Robert to contact them, as they had been looking for him as they were presenting an exhibition of the War Years. He made contact and was a guest at the exhibition
along with his wife. I do have the paper clippings of the exhibition featuring the story of Robert’s stay. if you would like copies.

I did contact Tatton some time ago to see if they could send me a copy of my grandmother’s letter to Robert, I am compiling my family tree you see, I had a reply which stated that they were not able to locate the archives of this event, but said that if they ever came across it, they would certainly forward me a copy. I live in hope.

My 91 yr old aunt also stated that she was offered a job, secretrial I think, at Tatton by Lord Egerton, but he instructed her there would be no ‘Sticky fingers or Lips’ meaning she could not wear lipstick or Nail polish, she declined his offer.

I thought that this information might be of interest to you, how Lord Egerton was very kind to my widowed Grandmother.

I am a Masters student at Bangor university in North Wales working upon a poetry collection based around Tatton Park and the lives that have connected with it. I have previously created collections upon Pembroke Castle for my undergraduate degree and Penrhyn Castle for a module upon my current course, but as my current project is a dissertation with a far larger credit basis to it, I am interested in exploring the historical details to a greater extent and also with perhaps offering the collection to the Trust when it is complete, for use at the house. Would either of you be able to assist me perhaps, or be willing to share some of your knowledge on the property and family with me? for I have unfortunately lost my contacts with the interested persons at the Park due to job changes. If you are interested at all, please would you be so good as to contact me at georgielorimer@hotmail.co.uk . Thank you very much.

Many thanks for this very well written story of the 4th Baron Egerton. Woman hater or not, there is a sense of mystery surrounding his life especially that involving Ngata Castle. This just makes him a more interesting study and i certainly would like to visit lord Egerton Castle and other interesting sites in Kenya as well.

I used to visit lord egertons castle in njoro when i was in high school, back then it was rundown, am happy to see how it turned out in latter years, by the way i went to a primary shool named after him, Egerton primary school which is located inside egerton university.

hey beatrice! lord egerton is such an indelible mark and landmark in our lives, look at egerton university and his castle.i can say he left a legacy of attraction n admiration.i will name ma first boy child egerton n ave a plan of visiting the place.

Lord Egerton is a relative. Some of his people that arrived early in american history settled and married native americans. My Egerton ancestors migrated around the US like most Americans and ended up settling in Kentucky. Far removed from our noble heritage. Some day perhaps I’ll
visit.

I think there’s a truth in this story; though some parts may have been exaggerated and/or misunderstood. The reason for a man’s actions are known by him alone. I choose to believe he was a kind but lonely man & if he found pockets of happiness in his time here in Kenya, then that was a blessing. A touching story. Thank you.

very interesting story ! i believe this woman had a different reason to reject this loving man. should have known her name so as to tell more about herself or just get some little history of her life. thanks for the story.

I have just visited the Castle this weekend… absolutely loved it. An excellent Man Lord Egerton. His impact on Kenya is profound especially in Agriculture. Sad though about his marriage proposal gone wrong… always wonder what would have happened if he married… would Kenya have gained?…or would we have just another colonial lineage?? What a sacrifice… RIP your Lordship.

Visited the Lord Egerton castle recently. I was intrigued by the history surrounding this place. Loved every minute of the tour. Wished our tour guide (not Onyiego) had been more detailed. Do not blame her, it was getting rather late. Thanks madam for your courtesy and sorry for forgetting your name. However I have questions that I need answered. He invited his Fiance in 1954, that makes him 80 then. So does that mean he wanted to marry at the grand age of 80?

I have been slowly trying to make a picture of this man in my mind, he was said to have been “an innovator and a man of great inventive and technical skill, a pioneer aviator, photographer and filmmaker, he was an early motorist and prodigious traveller,” but for all that he presents a lonely figure, dying far away from Cheshire at his castle estate in Kenya. Bitterly spurned by an un named woman who he pursued twice, even building the strange and wonderful Egerton Castle for her because she had rejected his first prospective marital home.

Dear Beatrice.
What a great article, well don!
Just think that this was our home for 3 months when Dad worked for Ngata Farms as Farm Manager. Mum had a cleaning depression and we moved to a vacant FM house with a fantastic view of Lake Nakuru. It was a boys dream to live in this Castle. Great to see life is back as I understood it was a Police Station for a while.

BETTY That was a nice piece you gave i was there a week ago, my third time and i must say the original story has changed. The old man who used to be there retired and the younger ones have diluted it content. Egerton University should document it so it doesn’t change completely and they should try restore the remaining things in the house. If something is not done all that will be left will be the walls and the grounds.

At the topmost part of his roof,Lord Egerton had a Union Jack flag which was raised and lowered by a man named Ndolo.Ndolo also opened the gate and front door for Lord Egerton whenever he came back from a tour outside the compound.In the castle also was a cell,however no one was ever locked in it,it was built as a requirement,every king’s castle had to have a cell

I think this is one of the most important information for me.
And i am glad reading your article. But should remark on few general things,
The site style is great, the articles is
really nice : D. Good job, cheers

#Beatrice what a nice story i didn’t know about Egerton ,I was there recently bt didn’t know it has a story we should know..I wish I can sit with u on a table as u sip coffee n telling me the story ..wow!!